The Prelinger Archives is a collection of
film
A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...
s relating to
U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American
landscape
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...
,
everyday life
Everyday life, daily life or routine life comprises the ways in which people typically act, think, and feel on a daily basis. Everyday life may be described as mundane, routine, natural, habitual, or Normality (behavior), normal.
Human diurna ...
, and
social history
Social history, often called history from below, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. Historians who write social history are called social historians.
Social history came to prominence in the 1960s, spreading f ...
. Originally based in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
from 1982 through 2002, it is now based in
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
.
History
The Archives were founded by
Rick Prelinger in 1982 to preserve what he calls "
ephemeral
Ephemerality (from the Greek word , meaning 'lasting only one day') is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Academically, the term ephemeral constitutionally describes a diverse assortment of things and experiences, fr ...
" films: films sponsored by corporations and organizations, educational films, and amateur and home movies.
Typically,
ephemeral films were produced to fulfill specific purposes at specific times, and many exist today only by chance or accident. About 65% of the Archive's holdings are in the
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...
because their copyrights have expired, or because they were U.S. productions that were published without proper copyright notice.
Criteria
The stated goal of the Prelinger Archives is to "collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven't been collected elsewhere".
By 2001, it had acquired 60,000 completed films of varying lengths and over 30,000 cans of unedited film. In 2002, the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
acquired the physical films held in the Archives as of that date.
The Archives made two subsequent donations to Library of Congress totalling some 65,000 cans of film, primarily industrial and educational titles. As of spring 2015, the Archives holds about 8,000 films in videotape and digital form, approximately 14,000 home movies, and 1,000 industrial and sponsored films acquired since 2002.
Compared to many other moving-image archives, Prelinger Archives provides a relatively high level of public access to its collections. Over 8,500
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...
films are available for download and unrestricted reuse on the Internet at the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
. All the films in the archives can be licensed for production use through
Getty Images.
Prelinger Archives currently focuses principally on collecting home movies and amateur film, and has approximately 30,000 items as of Fall 2023.
[
]
Gallery
File:Perversion for Profit part 1.ogv, '' Perversion for Profit'' part 1
File:125th Street Ferry.jpg, The 125th Street Ferry in New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
from 1941.
File:Yankee Stadium 1956.png, Yankee Stadium
Yankee Stadium is a baseball stadium located in the Bronx in New York City. It is the home field of Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees and New York City FC of Major League Soccer.
The stadium opened in April 2009, replacing the Yankee S ...
, 1956 screen capture
Notes
Further reading
*
PDF
External links
*
pannix.com
Prelinger Library
*
Rick Prelinger interview - Spots Unknown
{{Authority control
Film archives in the United States
Public domain
Library of Congress
Organizations established in 1982
Audiovisual ephemera
1982 establishments in New York City
Articles containing video clips
Internet Archive collections